[GS] Mali Discussion Thread

[thecrazyscot]

Apparently 3 gold per turn is the equivalent of 1 production per turn, as far as buying and producing stuff works. It'll be interesting how the efficiency from this works. (though you can't buy wonders)

Regarding Mali getting +1 trade route capacity every time you enter a golden age, is the trade route capacity permanent? Or will if go away if you leave a golden age?

The +1 trade route slot is permanent.

 

[Gamling80]

People seem to forget the food and faith bonus when they complain about the mines and production penalty. Mali cities will grow super fast if you have 4-6 deserts in range. You will have more pops to work more tiles. And if you happen to have som good yield that is none dessert tiles not to far away your early game will be on steroids. How often do you build a mine before you are getting your first iron? If you happen to have a copper in reach perhaps. I always go for pastures first to get some production and still get housing.

 

[acluewithout]

I don’t think the mine thing is a negative. To me, it seems a massive positive with very little downside.

I often don’t need mines early game, and you could get plenty of early production anyway from quarries (if necessary) and jungles (although they’ll be hard to find with a desert start, as will decent lumber mills).

Getting four gold though, that’s heaven. Hammers aren’t that useful after the early game. Gold is. Being able to get your citizen producing gold instead of hammers will be very handy.

And Mali will have lots of Builders. Once you get serfdom, there’s no direct production discount for Builders. There will be for Mali though with their 20%. And you’ll be building all those Builders in the city with Liang. (Or faith buying them. But yea, again, everyone can do that. Not like faith is hard to get.)

I still think Mali are a bit boring. I just don’t think you need to be Mali to get so much gold or faith. Have a look at the Egypt Civ of the Week.

I also don’t think their maluses are all that impactful beyond the very early game. If they could build, say, IZs or encampments then that would be interesting - particularly with the new power and resource rules.

I’m not even sure they really need to settle many desert cities anyway, contrary to the first look video. I mean, wouldn’t you be better settling just one which you run all your trade routes out of, and then settle the rest in, well, normal locations? Grassland and Plains hills will be better for mines, even if you only want them for gold. Your Commercial Hubs and HS also don’t need any deserts.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Yes, Mali may do it better because more gold and discounts. I just don’t think they’re really opening up any new gameplay or strategies - other than “settle desert”.

Well, I think if you let it it's going to strongly alter your mindset for what you're prioritizing--techs, "building" order, etc. Not many other civs want you to get a commercial hub up everywhere first thing. You'll probably end up running different cards, etc. Perhaps +production bonus isn't really going to be high on your list. I think you could end up making different choices than you might normally.

 

[Disgustipated]

Looking forward to my first Mali game where the map generator places me in the middle of tundra.

 

[Tobizi]

I think Mali is very well designed also for early game. I rarely build mines as first improvements (except on ressources and they depend on luck), so -1 on mines is not that important in ancient era. -30% prod is highly relevant but as you grow faster (hopefully), you should neglect this disadvantage, e.g. for your first settler.
As well you should urgently get a golden classical age, you can spam settlers and builders with gold and faith thereon. Aditionaly use chops and Agoge for units and I think you should be fine with defense.
Yes, there are "ifs", but they are always there and getting heavier with GS and catastrophes. If you have a main flood and lose pop, units and improvements early, you can reroll on deity.

 

[PhilBowles]

I'm not a fan of desert tiles getting less production, it'd really hit you if you settler a city which is all desert. Though I suppose if your city is part desert it's not too bad.

It's mines that get less production - basically mines are no use for production for Mali until you get upgraded techs, they're a gold improvement (but still get adjacency bonuses). Deserts give a gold and faith bonus to the city centre. The mine production loss is less significant than it looks, since mines are mostly useful for adjacency and getting resource access early in the game rather than the production boost, and the gold bonus is enormous relative to the cost of early game units/buildings. If anything I'm more likely to build more mines early as Mali.

Overall, this is my favourite civ so far of the new expansion - it links into multiple somewhat minor existing game systems (holy sites, faith purchasing, golden ages), it has an interesting drawback (which in the case of buildings will be offset by the gold purchasing power), it makes more interesting use of a poor terrain start than Canada or the Inca, and it hits the flavour well.

I looked at the leader screen and Mali gets -30% production when constructing building and training units. So buildings and units will be more expensive to build?

That sounds like bad news combined with less production from mines.

More expensive to build, but Mali has a lot of money and units/districts can be purchased. The signoff in the video even mentions buying your way to victory - Mali is intended to make lots of money and gold-rush everything it needs.

That would be broken without a production offset.

 

[NegativeZero]

I really want to see a turn 1 save played by the devs when showcasing Mali. However, I think they'll start with a late ancient -> early classical save ~40-50 turns in already.

I don't see Mali pulling off a settler within the first 40 odd turns due to low initial production and requiring an initial builder for 1-2 gold mines. Although I would like to be wrong about this.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I really want to see a turn 1 save played by the devs when showcasing Mali. However, I think they'll start with a late ancient -> early classical save ~40-50 turns in already.

I don't see Mali pulling off a settler within the first 40 odd turns due to low initial production and requiring an initial builder for 1-2 gold mines. Although I would like to be wrong about this.

Not sure. With the extra food you can work on extra production tiles though.

 

[NegativeZero]

Not sure. With the extra food you can work on extra production tiles though.

I've done some rough figures and Mali's extra city center food is quite powerful.

It lets them pull off a builder within 20 turns with either x2 production (hills) or gold (copper, silver, etc.) tiles. This starts snowballing with gold mines to reach ~20g per turn to save for a settler with 3 pop working gold/ production tiles.

I haven't accounted for policy cards or huts with this which makes it promising for a civ being dropped into the middle of a desert.

I'm also of the opinion that their capital will not be their best city, but a solid gold/faith generating platform.

Edit: A large problem with Mali is split bonus or luxury resources between gold and production. They'll get some production and some gold, but neither in large enough amounts to propel them quickly.

If they are lucky to get just gold yielding tiles, they'll have a much easier time affording everything without worrying about hard building some stuff.

 

[Jewman]

Reading up on governor's on arioch's well of souls and I noticed this promotion for Moksha:

• Citadel of God: City ignores religious pressure from Religions not founded by the Governor's player. Gain Faith equal to 25% of the construction cost when finishing buildings.

I don't play religious games enough to be familiar with this promotion. I am wondering, if you buy the building do you still gain faith equal to 25% of the construction cost? Also is the construction cost calculated on its base cost or after discounts (for example the discount on purchases from suguba)? Getting faith refunds on your gold purchases that are already cheap is like another huge discount on top of a huge discount and could really snowball, especially if you also get this promotion:

• Divine Architect: +20% Production toward Holy Site buildings in the city. Allows city to purchase districts with Faith.

Between Reyna/Moksha you could be buying up districts and buildings left and right in new cities. Mali may end up being the ultimate REX civ.

 

[steveg700]

So, Mali doesn't get any extra housing abilities, right? They get more food, but an empire does not grow on food alone.

No farms except on flood plains, probably not much in the way of camps or pastures.

 

[Jewman]

So, Mali doesn't get any extra housing abilities, right? They get more food, but an empire does not grow on food alone.

No farms except on flood plains, probably not much in the way of camps or pastures.

I think the key to Mali's food bonus is that automatically makes newly settled cities superior and can get them to 4 pop, enough for their two main districts muguba and holy site (probably). They don't necessarily want large productive cities, they want a large amount of cities pumping out gold and increasing their trade route limit. Naturally, you will still settle some decent cities outside of the desert like you would any other game, but the extremely unattractive desert settles will still be gold/faith/trade route farms.

 

[Sansa_Stark]

Sry I do not have time to read anything about Mali/Civ6 these days, but I checked First Look and have one question - was this already labeled as negative civ by Lily?

 

[PhilBowles]

I don’t think the mine thing is a negative. To me, it seems a massive positive with very little downside.

I often don’t need mines early game, and you could get plenty of early production anyway from quarries (if necessary) and jungles (although they’ll be hard to find with a desert start, as will decent lumber mills).

Getting four gold though, that’s heaven. Hammers aren’t that useful after the early game. Gold is. Being able to get your citizen producing gold instead of hammers will be very handy.

And Mali will have lots of Builders. Once you get serfdom, there’s no direct production discount for Builders. There will be for Mali though with their 20%. And you’ll be building all those Builders in the city with Liang. (Or faith buying them. But yea, again, everyone can do that. Not like faith is hard to get.)

I still think Mali are a bit boring. I just don’t think you need to be Mali to get so much gold or faith. Have a look at the Egypt Civ of the Week.

I also don’t think their maluses are all that impactful beyond the very early game. If they could build, say, IZs or encampments then that would be interesting - particularly with the new power and resource rules.

I’m not even sure they really need to settle many desert cities anyway, contrary to the first look video. I mean, wouldn’t you be better settling just one which you run all your trade routes out of, and then settle the rest in, well, normal locations? Grassland and Plains hills will be better for mines, even if you only want them for gold. Your Commercial Hubs and HS also don’t need any deserts.

You can do pretty much anything with any civ. I like Mali for the elegance of the design, the internal synergies (for instance a 'hidden strategy' is that you'll want a lot of Holy Sites. A Holy Site by itself gives enough of an adjacency bonus that you will always get the era score boost from having a good commercial district, which in turn helps reach those Golden Ages - on top of the general advantages for high adjacency bonuses), and because it is likely to prompt me to use mechanics (such as golden ages and Holy Sites) that I generally neglect. It's also an interesting take on a civ suited for any victory condition which isn't just a pile of flat, passive bonuses. Gold is a more interesting resource boost than other yields because you have to actively decide how to spend it for it to have any value.

Yes, the end result may be that it plays a bit like Egypt - but it gets there using a different set of systems and techs, rather than by spamming Wonders and improvements.

 

[steveg700]

I've done some rough figures and Mali's extra city center food is quite powerful.

It lets them pull off a builder within 20 turns with either x2 production (hills) or gold (copper, silver, etc.) tiles. This starts snowballing with gold mines to reach ~20g per turn to save for a settler with 3 pop working gold/ production tiles.

I haven't accounted for policy cards or huts with this which makes it promising for a civ being dropped into the middle of a desert.

I'm also of the opinion that their capital will not be their best city, but a solid gold/faith generating platform.

Edit: A large problem with Mali is split bonus or luxury resources between gold and production. They'll get some production and some gold, but neither in large enough amounts to propel them quickly.

If they are lucky to get just gold yielding tiles, they'll have a much easier time affording everything without worrying about hard building some stuff.

Got some concerns about getting early exploration done. Getting a scout out may be so slow that it's not worth the effort.

Sry I do not have time to read anything about Mali/Civ6 these days, but I checked First Look and have one question - was this already labeled as negative civ by Lily?

Yes! Quite negative! Very encouraging.

 

[Siptah]

Sry I do not have time to read anything about Mali/Civ6 these days, but I checked First Look and have one question - was this already labeled as negative civ by Lily?

sure.

I hope the Thursday Live Stream showcasing Mali will show more about the Diplomatic Victory. If it works how I suspect, there isn't much need for large and very productive Malian cities, a lot of gold and faith generating settlements may suffice. International trade routes might also help and you probably won't offend too many neighbors with conquering sprees as you wait to be attacked.

 

[UWHabs]

sure.

I hope the Thursday Live Stream showcasing Mali will show more about the Diplomatic Victory. If it works how I suspect, there isn't much need for large and very productive Malian cities, a lot of gold and faith generating settlements may suffice. International trade routes might also help and you probably won't offend too many neighbors with conquering sprees as you wait to be attacked.

The first half will almost assuredly be focused on the medieval, since they're always going to demonstrate them around the time that their UU/UB is active. My guess is they'll start a few turns from the next era, needing to get a few more era points to get the golden age to demonstrate the free trade route, and then tech to Feudalism, and as usual, end that part of the stream just before they actually build a Mandekalu.

What the 2nd half of the stream focuses on, no idea.

 

[tedhebert]

How the heck is one supposed to survive early game with -30pct to units AND -1 from mines???
Deity AI would just wipe you out...

NO NO... DEITY AI IS A MORON !!! you can beat it while watching tv and reading a book at the same time as playing the game !!! Didn't you know ???

 

[Siptah]

What the 2nd half of the stream focuses on, no idea.

Who else was in this Hungary game besides Poland?